Bretwalda - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Bretwalda is an Old English word, the first record of which comes from the late 9th century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...

. It is given to some of the rulers of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms

History of Anglo-Saxon England

Anglo-Saxon England refers to the period of the history of that part of Britain, that became known as England, lasting from the end of Roman occupation and establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the Norman conquest of England in 1066 by William the Conqueror...

from the 5th century onwards who had achieved overlordship of some or all of the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. It is unclear whether the word dates back to the 5th century and was used by the kings themselves, or whether it is a later, 9th-century, invention. The term bretwalda also appears in a charter of Æthelstan

Athelstan of England

Athelstan , called the Glorious, was the King of England from 924 or 925 to 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder, grandson of Alfred the Great and nephew of Æthelflæd of Mercia...

.

The rulers of Mercia

Mercia

Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...

were generally the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kings from the mid-7th to the early 9th centuries, but are not accorded the title of bretwalda by the Chronicle, which is generally thought to be because of the anti-Mercian bias of the Chroniclers. The Annals of Wales continued to recognize the kings of Northumbria as 'Kings of the Saxons' (i.e. the English) until the death of Osred I of Northumbria

Osred I of Northumbria

Osred was king of Northumbria from 705 until his death. He was the son of King Aldfrith of Northumbria. Aldfrith's only known wife was Cuthburg, but it is not certainly known whether Osred was her son...

in 716.

Bretwëlde was a term used in 11th and 12th century Ireland to denote the 'high king'. Part of the Gaelic

Gaelic

Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels", including language and culture. As a noun, it may refer to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually.-Gaelic languages:...

lexicon, this spelling suggests a Germanic (Saxon) origin, as the 'w' is most likely pronounced as a 'v'. It is also possible that the term derives from the Welsh Brit Gweldig, the term for a ruler of Britain.

Listed by Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Ælle of Sussex (488–circa
Circa
Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...

(c.)514)
Ceawlin of Wessex
Ceawlin of Wessex
Ceawlin was a King of Wessex. He may have been the son of Cynric of Wessex and the grandson of Cerdic of Wessex, whom the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle represents as the leader of the first group of Saxons to come to the land which later became Wessex...

(560–92, died 593)
Æthelberht of Kent (590–616)
Rædwald of East Anglia (c.600– around 624)
Edwin of Deira
Edwin of Northumbria
Edwin , also known as Eadwine or Æduini, was the King of Deira and Bernicia – which later became known as Northumbria – from about 616 until his death. He converted to Christianity and was baptised in 627; after he fell at the Battle of Hatfield Chase, he was venerated as a saint.Edwin was the son...

(616–33)
Oswald of Northumbria
Oswald of Northumbria
Oswald was King of Northumbria from 634 until his death, and is now venerated as a Christian saint.Oswald was the son of Æthelfrith of Bernicia and came to rule after spending a period in exile; after defeating the British ruler Cadwallon ap Cadfan, Oswald brought the two Northumbrian kingdoms of...

(633–42)
Oswiu of Northumbria
Oswiu of Northumbria
Oswiu , also known as Oswy or Oswig , was a King of Bernicia. His father, Æthelfrith of Bernicia, was killed in battle, fighting against Rædwald, King of the East Angles and Edwin of Deira at the River Idle in 616...

(642–70)

Mercian rulers with similar or greater authority

Penda of Mercia
Penda of Mercia
Penda was a 7th-century King of Mercia, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom in what is today the English Midlands. A pagan at a time when Christianity was taking hold in many of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Penda took over the Severn Valley in 628 following the Battle of Cirencester before participating in the...

(628/33-655)
Wulfhere of Mercia
Wulfhere of Mercia
Wulfhere was King of Mercia from the end of the 650s until 675. He was the first Christian king of all of Mercia, though it is not known when or how he converted from Anglo-Saxon paganism. His accession marked the end of Oswiu of Northumbria's overlordship of southern England, and Wulfhere...

(658–675)
Æthelred of Mercia (675–704, died 716)
Æthelbald of Mercia (716–757)
Offa of Mercia
Offa of Mercia
Offa was the King of Mercia from 757 until his death in July 796. The son of Thingfrith and a descendant of Eowa, Offa came to the throne after a period of civil war following the assassination of Æthelbald after defeating the other claimant Beornred. In the early years of Offa's reign it is likely...

(757–796)
Cœnwulf of Mercia
Coenwulf of Mercia
Coenwulf was King of Mercia from December 796 to 821. He was a descendant of a brother of King Penda, who had ruled Mercia in the middle of the 7th century. He succeeded Ecgfrith, the son of Offa; Ecgfrith only reigned for five months, with Coenwulf coming to the throne in the same year that Offa...

(796–821)

Etymology

The first syllable of the term bretwalda may be related to 'Briton'

Britons (historical)

The Britons were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic...

or 'Britain' and would thus mean 'sovereign of Britain' or 'wielder of Britain'. The word may be a compound

Compound (linguistics)

In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...

containing the Old English adjective brytten (from the verb breotan meaning 'to break' or 'to disperse'), an element also found in the terms bryten rice ('kingdom'), bryten-grund ('the wide expanse of the earth') and bryten cyning ('king whose authority was widely extended'). Though the origin is ambiguous, the draughtsman of the charter issued by Æthelstan used the term in a way that can only mean 'wide ruler'.

The latter etymology was first suggested by John Mitchell Kemble

John Mitchell Kemble

John Mitchell Kemble , English scholar and historian, was the eldest son of Charles Kemble the actor and Maria Theresa Kemble....

who alluded that "of six manuscripts in which this passage occurs, one only reads Bretwalda: of the remaining five, four have Bryten-walda or -wealda, and one Breten-anweald, which is precisely synonymous with Brytenwealda"; that Æthelstan was called brytenwealda ealles ðyses ealondes, which Kemble translates as "ruler of all these islands"; and that bryten- is a common prefix to words meaning 'wide or general dispersion' and that the similarity to the word bretwealh ('Briton') is "merely accidental".

Contemporary use

The first recorded use of the term Bretwalda comes from a West Saxon

Wessex

The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...

chronicle of the late 9th century that applied the term to Ecgberht

Egbert of Wessex

Egbert was King of Wessex from 802 until his death in 839. His father was Ealhmund of Kent...

, who ruled from 802 to 839. The chronicler also wrote down the names of seven kings that Bede

Bede

Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...

listed in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
The Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is a work in Latin by Bede on the history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the conflict between Roman and Celtic Christianity.It is considered to be one of the most important original references on...

in 731. All subsequent manuscripts of the Chronicle use the term Brytenwalda, which may have represented the original term or derived from a common error.

There is no evidence that the term was a title that had any practical use, with implications of formal rights, powers and office, or even that it had any existence before the 9th-century. Bede wrote in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

and never used the term and his list of kings holding imperium should be treated with caution, not least in that he overlooks kings such as Penda of Mercia

Penda of Mercia

Penda was a 7th-century King of Mercia, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom in what is today the English Midlands. A pagan at a time when Christianity was taking hold in many of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Penda took over the Severn Valley in 628 following the Battle of Cirencester before participating in the...

, who clearly held some kind of dominance during his reign. Similarly, in his list of bretwaldas, the West Saxon chronicler ignored such Mercian kings as Offa

Offa of Mercia

Offa was the King of Mercia from 757 until his death in July 796. The son of Thingfrith and a descendant of Eowa, Offa came to the throne after a period of civil war following the assassination of Æthelbald after defeating the other claimant Beornred. In the early years of Offa's reign it is likely...

.

The use of the term Bretwalda was the attempt by a West Saxon chronicler to make some claim of West Saxon kings to the whole of Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

. The concept of the overlordship of the whole of Britain was at least recognised in the period, whatever was meant by the term. Quite possibly it was a survival of a Roman concept of "Britain": it is significant that, while the hyperbolic inscriptions on coins and titles in charters

Charters

Charters is a surname and may refer to :* Ann Charters , American professor of English* Charlie Charters , former English rugby union official and sports marketing executive* Frank Charters, , English cricketer...

often included the title rex Britanniae, when England was unified the title used was rex Angulsaxonum, ('king of the Anglo-Saxons'.)

Modern interpretation by historians

For some time the existence of the word bretwalda in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was based in part on the list given by Bede

Bede

in his Historia Ecclesiastica, led historians to think that there was perhaps a 'title' held by Anglo-Saxon overlords. This was particularly attractive as it would lay the foundations for the establishment of an English monarchy. The 20th-century historian Frank Stenton

Frank Stenton

Sir Frank Merry Stenton was a 20th century historian of Anglo-Saxon England, and president of the Royal Historical Society . He was the author of Anglo-Saxon England, a volume of the Oxford History of England, first published in 1943 and widely considered a classic history of the period...

said of the Anglo-Saxon chronicler that "his inaccuracy is more than compensated by his preservation of the English title applied to these outstanding kings". He argued that the term bretwalda "falls into line with the other evidence which points to the Germanic origin of the earliest English institutions".

Over the later 20th century this assumption was increasingly challenged. Patrick Wormald

Patrick Wormald

Charles Patrick Wormald was a British historian born in Neston, Cheshire, son of historian Brian Wormald.He attended Eton College as a King's Scholar...

interpreted it as "less an objectively realized office than a subjectively perceived status" and emphasized the partiality of its usage in favour of Southumbrian rulers. In 1991, Steven Fanning argued that "it is unlikely that the term ever existed as a title or was in common usage in Anglo-Saxon England". The fact that Bede never mentioned a special title for the kings in his list implies that he was unaware of one. In 1995, Simon Keynes

Simon Keynes

Simon Douglas Keynes MA, PhD, Litt.D, FBA is the current Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at Cambridge University.-Biography:...

observed that "if Bede's concept of the Southumbrian overlord, and the chronicler's concept of the 'Bretwalda', are to be regarded as artificial constructs, which have no validity outside the context of the literary works in which they appear, we are released from the assumptions about political development which they seem to involve...we might ask whether kings in the eighth and ninth centuries were quite so obsessed with the establishment of a pan-Southumbrian state".

Modern interpretations view the concept of bretwaldaship as complex and an important indicator of how a 9th-century chronicler interpreted history and attempted to insert the increasingly more powerful Saxon kings into that history.

Overlordship

A complex array of dominance and subservience existed during the Anglo-Saxon period. A king who used charters

Anglo-Saxon Charters

Anglo-Saxon charters are documents from the early medieval period in Britain which typically make a grant of land or record a privilege. The earliest surviving charters were drawn up in the 670s; the oldest surviving charters granted land to the Church, but from the eighth century surviving...

to grant land in another kingdom, indicated such a relationship. If a king held sway over a large kingdom, such as when the Mercians dominated the East Anglians, the relationship would have been more equal than in the case the Mercian dominance of the Hwicce

Hwicce

The Hwicce were one of the peoples of Anglo-Saxon England. The exact boundaries of their kingdom are uncertain, though it is likely that they coincided with those of the old Diocese of Worcester, founded in 679–80, the early bishops of which bore the title Episcopus Hwicciorum...

, which was a comparatively small kingdom. Mercia was arguably the most powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom for much of the late 7th and 8th centuries, though Mercian kings are missed out of the two main 'lists'. For Bede, Mercia was a traditional enemy of his native Northumbria and he regarded powerful kings such as the pagan Penda as standing in the way of the Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. Bede omits them from his list, even though it is evident that Penda held a considerable degree of power. Similarly powerful Mercia kings such as Offa are missed out of the West Saxon Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which sought to demonstrate the legitimacy of their kings to rule over other Anglo-Saxon peoples.

Other sources

Charles-Edwards, T. M. "The continuation of Bede, s.a. 750. High-kings, kings of Tara and Bretwaldas." In Seanchas. Studies in early and medieval Irish archaeology, history and literature in honour of Francis J. Byrne, ed. Alfred P. Smyth. Dublin: Four Courts, 2000. 137–45.
Dumville, David "The Terminology of Overkingship in Early Anglo-Saxon England." In The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration period to the Eighth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. J. Hines (1997): 345–65
Keynes, Simon. "Bretwalda." In The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge et al. Oxford, 1999.
Kirby, D. P. The Making of Early England. London, 1967.
Wormald, Patrick. "Bede, Beowulf and the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy." In Bede and Anglo-Saxon England. Papers in honour of the 1300th anniversary of the birth of Bede, ed. R. T. Farrell. BAR, British series 46. 1978. 32–95.
Yorke, Barbara. "The vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon overlordship." Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 2 (1981): 171–200.